That's pretty much how I cook, Sahi! Best friend and I harvested a completely ridiculous amount of veggies on Thursday - it was supposed to be a "quick" dinner, but it took quite a lot of time to clean and chop it all. It was definitely worth it, though - incredibly tasty.

I've now added a paintbrush to my gardening equipment, to hand-pollinate cucumber flowers. Yes, I might be a little crazy...
I really need to eat some kohlrabi to free up space to plant the cucumber outside, so the bees can get at the flowers!


Just packed up a little prize for one of the people who guessed correctly about my amount of plants (the other is my grandfather, he'll get to pick something out the next time I visit him). So I get to go to the post office again tomorrow - but this time I'm only sending seeds, not live plants, so it doesn't matter if they spend an extra night at the post office, so I can mail them at "my" teeny tiny village post office instead of the main post office.

I posted about it  on my German blog last night. It's a lot of rambling about cucumber varieties and pollination in general, but what matters are the two pictures: the first one, with the tiny cucumber under the flower, is a female flower, the other one with the thin stalk is a male one. Basically, you just need to stick a paintbrush into the male flower first to get some pollen, and then stick it into the female flower to rub the pollen onto the stigma.
Though you might have a variety that has only female flowers, then cucumbers should grow without pollination.

Loved the blog post! And I'll definitely keep a look out with my zuchini and cucumbers for the flowers.

Today, I read a disturbing article in one of the old newspapers we use to wrap stuff at work. (I don't have a newspaper subscription any more, because I don't want to pay money for something I often don't take the time to read, so if I come across an interesting article while wrapping plants, I'll put that page aside.)
Anyway, the newspaper was from last September, so I don't know how things are now, but then, the EU was apparently planning a piece of legislation saying that heirloom varieties could only be grown in the area they originated from. What the fluttering flamingo?! No more selling/buying/trading/giving away seeds? On the one hand, they're trying to force Austria to allow in GMOs, and on the other hand they want to restrict trade with heirlooms? (Well, of course they do, there's not nearly as much money to be made with them, or such a large lobby and big companies behind them.) There are already enough hoops for people selling heirloom seeds to jump through - for example, varieties of perfectly safe plants like tomatoes can't be sold as food plants unless the particular variety has been approved by... I don't remember, someone. I came across an online shop once that had a disclaimer saying something like, "I'm not allowed to tell you they're safe to eat. You can feed them to your pets, though." Or you can't sell them to the "general public", which some are working around by automatically making all customers part of some "club" - then they're not "general public" any more.

Crazy, all of it. If it weren't so late, I'd try to find out if they're still planning this law. If they pass it, though, I'll gladly become a "criminal".

So close to cracking € 100 with my harvests - I'm at 99.44 right now. Well, actually I have harvested more than that, but the drying herbs aren't dry enough to be weighed yet.

But - I'm not far behind! I ate my first tomato yesterday!

I'm really looking forward to writing my "Harvest Monday" blog post next week - I've harvested a LOT this week! I hope the harvest pictures I took today turned out OK, I had so much fun arranging my harvest in the shape of a face!

Yesterday I sanded the windows for my wind screen. (Or rather the wood work on said windows.)

They look ever so much better now. Too bad today is such lousy weather. I almost wish we'd gone to Ikea today instead of yesterday. (Since yesterday was such great weather.) Oh well, the appointment had been made weeks ago and I did have a lot of fun.

I bought my own dehydration machine. So somewhere next week I should be able to dry my herbs.

Yay!

You mentioning you wanted one reminded me to finally eat all the apples I dried last year. So right now, I need to buy a lot less fruit!

I have no idea how much I've spent, but I do know I'm nowhere near earning it back. :)

Although right now my zucchini is blooming like mad, and my bell peppers are nearly 4cm long. (And those can be pretty expensive to buy.)

Hmm, my herbs needed more than 5 hours to dry. Oh well, we'll just continue tomorrow. Don't dare to leave it on when I'm not there.

I think air humidity might be a bit too high here to air dry herbs. Not really sure as I haven't tried, but I really liked that food drying thingy. Especially as I can now get a recipe from a friend for dried spicy kale.

Harvested a handful of green beans, a carrot, a cucumber and some tomatoes yesterday. And I crushed all my dried oregano and put it in one of my new jars. It's quite a lot. I think at least 100 ml (as the jar is 250).